Oh, friends. It has been more than a minute since I last posted an update here! Since I popped to give you news of my upcoming book, Glad & Golden Hours: A Companion for Advent and Christmastide the days have been full and sweet. I spent the first quarter of 2024 polishing and finalizing the manuscript, which involved long winter days writing like mad (when I’m under a deadline I often take to my bed, Edith Wharton-style, with my laptop and notebooks), but I was thankful for both the space and the grace to do such deep work. For someone who loves to cook, I have very little recollection of what we ate during those weeks, but Philip managed to keep us afloat with lots of his delicious quesadillas and homemade pizza!

Philip’s first glimpse of Glad & Golden Hours

In April we saw the book off to press, which was cause for the first round of celebrations that have characterized this year. But we scarcely had a minute to pop the cork on a bottle of champagne before it was time to get the garden in (my poor seedlings were languishing and leggy in the potting shed) and start preparing for a much-anticipated vacation with my entire family.

I’ve been hard at work behind the scenes on a project very close to my heart. Read on to learn more about my upcoming book Glad & Golden Hours: A Companion for Advent and Christmastide, and to have a sneak peek at what’s coming…

I love a good origin story, particularly if it contains all the elements I love in a regular story: serendipity, friendship, history and happenstance. I want a story to be lit with a lamp of joy, and burnished to a rich glow under the pressure of some holy sorrow. Above all, I require a goodly dose—or at least a glimpse—of real redemption. I don’t want to see sadness tied up with a bow; that would be an insult to both sorrow and redemption, not to mention to my own battle-scarred heart. I just want to be assured that sadness is not meaningless, and that the ordinary matter of my ordinary life actually matters—for something and to Someone. 

I like to think that the story behind Glad & Golden Hours: A Companion for Advent and Christmastide contains all of these elements for it is, in fact, a deep slice of my story.

The phone calls started the night before and continued well into the morning:

“Are you going?”

“Do you think the roads will be safe?”

“What does your husband say? What does your mother say?”

I had been watching the weather forecasts just as intently as everyone else. And I was just as torn up about it. Any other day, I kept thinking. But not the afternoon of my precious friend’s party, the Valentine Tea that’s become legendary not just for the number of years we’ve enjoyed it in succession, but for the overflowing love of our hostess, perennially delighting us with the art of her kitchen and the warmth of her home. The years are so crammed with memories they all seem to blend together in a tender mural of glitter and lace, homemade chocolates and heart-shaped scones. Little hands dispensing their favors and larger ones just as eager to impart theirs. All buoyed and borne, of course, upon oceans of hot tea and haunted by the music of feminine laughter.

And so it was with a divided heart that I pored over the forecasts and discussed possible outcomes.

It is the Sixth Day of Christmas. Without, the world is cloaked in gloom, dripping with rain and endless mist, but within the lights on the tree and the candles scattered about gleam with increasing warmth. I love this point in the season, when the rooms are tidy and set to rights, the greenery is still fresh, and there’s little more on the agenda than another cup of tea and a stack of new books to peruse. The days leading up to Christmas were a flurry of preparation—stocking the freezer, making beds, setting tables and washing up, only to iron the linens, polish a bit of silver, and set the tables again. I clipped holly and ivy from the yard and arranged my beloved blood-red roses; I filled the larder with tins of cookies, rolled out cinnamon buns, made grocery lists, wrapped gifts, pored anxiously over both candy and meat thermometers, boxed up sweets to send across the miles. In short, my days have looked much like those of other women, all over the world and down throughout history, endeavoring to shape in sugar and sparkle, taste, fragrance, and memory, a holiday which enwraps those we love in practical affection and wholesomely impractical abundance.

This flurry of plans
is over, over.
And I’m sorry and glad together.

Our bustling house
is sane now, sane now.
And I’m sorry and glad together.

“Sorry and Glad Together,” Karen Peris

This lyric by Karen Peris of The Innocence Mission perfectly articulates my feelings on this ripe and radiant November day. It’s the first “normal” Monday I’ve had in months, for which I am right royally glad. But Saturday was one of the very few nights since August that there hasn’t been a guest (or four!) tucked into one of the bedrooms upstairs—for which I am most tenderly sorry. I love the quiet; I love the sudden silence within which to notice that the light really has changed in all my rooms and that the air outside is redolent with wet leaves and woodsmoke—fragrances which, above all others, pin my heart most firmly to the comforts of home. I love the way my house seems to enfold me with a motherly warmth this time of year, affirming the beauty of the simplest things. But I am desperately missing the dear ones who have also learned what it means to be at home here over recent weeks or months or years.

It is the afternoon before Thanksgiving and I’m sitting for a moment by my kitchen fire with my tea (and a wee drop of sherry, just to celebrate all that’s been accomplished thus far!). The cranberry conserve, with its aromas sacred to this day since time immemorial, is simmering away on the stove, and the basement refrigerator has been steadily filling with dishes the holiday simply wouldn’t be complete without: sweet potato casserole topped with sugared pecans, “Aunt Fanny’s” baked squash, mashed potatoes laced with rosemary and blue cheese, and a nice little turkey rubbed with butter and herbs. There will be just four of us tomorrow—plus the plate drop-off to a dear friend in quarantine—but I simply could not dispense with a single favorite. I don’t know about you—and I absolutely want to be sensitive towards those who don’t feel as I do right now—but I find myself wanting to celebrate more than ever. Fiercely, defiantly, with a love that longs to be incarnated to the three others at my table (and the friend in quarantine). I want the fragrances rising from my kitchen tomorrow to be like incense, wooing old memories and solidifying new ones, and I want each match touched to a waiting wick to affirm the Light the darkness can never extinguish.

The Cotswolds, July 2019

No joke—we were supposed to be spending St. Patrick’s Day in
Ireland.

We made the plans months ago, as soon as the date was settled for my Awards Ceremony in Oxford at the end of March: we would visit beloved friends in Northern Ireland and catch our Rabbit Room chum Andrew Peterson in concert. We were arranging to meet up with Ross Wilson, my Hutchmook UK session partner from last summer and creator of the magnificent C.S. Lewis sculpture, “The Searcher” in Belfast. From Belfast, we’d hop a ferry over to Scotland, and drive down into the Lake District, holing up for a few days in a cottage once owned by Beatrix Potter (yes, really). And thence, on into Oxford, where four years of study (five, if you count the year-off thanks to the house fire) would culminate with what my course director described as “full University panoply,” held in the famous Sheldonian Theatre.

To be honest, I’ve been dreaming of that moment for six
years this March, ever since I submitted my application on the first day of
spring, then sat down on the violet-studded grass in the backyard with my puppy,
Bonnie, to contemplate what I’d just done.

It is the Feast of the Epiphany, and I’ve watched the sunrise—as I have almost every morning of this blessed season—beyond the sparkle and magic of my Christmas tree. I’ve seen the low-hung clouds turn lavender and then flush with gold, as if at some heavenly delight, and the old holly tree awaken, its branches spangled with the glory of dawn. It’s a beauty both familiar and astonishing, and the joy it bears is an old, old friend.

For twenty
years I’ve stood at these old windows, steaming coffee in hand, marveling over
the tender mercy of a December dayspring. For twenty years I’ve watched and
waited and prayed in all that early morning twinkle and glow, yearning to make
room for the One I love—the original Dayspring, the midwinter Rose, Immanuel.
And then I’ve gotten up, poured another cup of coffee, and thrown myself, with
varying degrees of delight, into a day’s worth of preparations for—or enjoyment
of—Christmas.

So much of it has remained constant over the years—the same dog-eared recipes, the same beloved ornaments—now grown to quite a collection from newlywed days! The creche in its place upon the Empire chest in the den and the Advent wreath hung in the window.

Greetings, Friends!

I really
can’t believe it’s been nearly a year since I’ve written here! Not for want of
good intentions, or even ideas, I assure you, but from an utter lack of time. Life
has been good the past year—hard in some places and demanding in others—but
intensely full. Back in January I found myself staring down a year-long
series of hurdles that needed to be cleared: classes and conferences, speaking
engagements, papers, smaller trips and extended travel, not to mention completing
repairs on our house (which will never be completed, of course, because it’s a house
?) and finishing my Oxford qualification
(which I did back in September!).

But I’ve
missed this space; I’ve missed chronicling some of life’s most significantly ordinary
moments here. More than that, I’ve missed you, the faces behind the
sweet comments and life-giving notes over the years. It’s never been my intention
to leave this place uncurated for this long (although any of you longsuffering,
longtime readers can attest to the fact that lapses are nothing new around
here!). Even amid some of my busiest seasons, I’ve always got this narrative running
in the back of my mind of how I would tell things to you—how I would try and
give you a glimpse of what I’m seeing from my little window on the world; a
touch of what I’m growing or creating or caring for; a taste of what I’m
reading or concocting in my kitchen.

I started this post on Saturday and only finished it today. But here’s a glimpse into our Thanksgiving–easily the most meaningful of my life. I do hope that each of you had a special and restful holiday…

Oh, how I love this time of year; this happy hobnobbing of autumn and Advent, the lingering glow of a Thanksgiving feast interlaced with the early bright gleams of Christmas traditions. We went to our first Christmas party last night, and tonight we’ll gather with friends for an evening of music and fellowship and autumnal fare. Tomorrow we’ll probably bring home our Fraser fir from the lot down the road before heading out for a Thanksgiving celebration with Philip’s family. There’s a festive little vase of holly berries on the table before me as I write, set against the lingering gold of a cherry tree outside the window, and I think I might just put up my ‘birds’ Christmas tree’ in the bedroom before the weekend is out.

In short, it’s a lovely jumble of seasons—both literal and metaphorical—and the very transience of it all makes it all the more lovely.

We hosted Thanksgiving here on Thursday, a thing neither of us would have thought possible a year ago.